Earthquakes Drop MLS Playoff Opener to N.Y. 1-0

Earthquakes Drop MLS Playoff Opener to N.Y. 1-0

SANTA CLARA (AP) -- Joel Lindpere picked up the slack with Thierry Henry and Tony Tchani out with injuries.

Lindpere scored in the 55th minute and the New York Red Bulls beat the San Jose Earthquakes 1-0 on Saturday night in the opener of the two-game, total-goals Eastern Conference semifinal.

The Red Bulls, the top team in the Eastern Conference during the regular season, had to make do without international star Henry and midfielder Tchani. They still had enough firepower to beat the Quakes, who were the lowest-seeded team to make the MLS playoffs.

"I think we played really well," New York coach Hans Backe said. "It's probably one of our best away games. (We were) so composed."

Game 2 is Thursday night in Harrison, N.J., where the Red Bulls went 10-3-2 this season, including a 2-0 win against the Earthquakes on Aug. 28.

"It's a great, great win to start with, but it's only the first half," Backe said. "If we can play so composed as today, I think we will be hard to beat."

Lindpere scored after the Earthquakes were unable to clear a cross from Juan Pablo Angel. The ball fell to the feet of Lindpere, who carefully placed a low shot to the far post to beat goalkeeper Jon Busch.

"Often, the difference between who goes on and who doesn't are the plays in front of goal," Earthquakes defender Jason Hernandez said. "They got a goal, and we were chasing it, looking for it and couldn't find it."

New York was an MLS-best 14-0-1 when scoring first in the regular season.

Lindpere almost put New York ahead in the 44th minute when he got the ball 9 yards away from net with Busch off his line, but San Jose's Jason Hernandez was able to clear Lindpere's low strike off the line.

San Jose nearly tied it the 83rd minute when leading scorer Chris Wondolowski banged a volley off the ground. Eduardo had a good look at the uncovered rebound, but his shot caromed off the post.

"We said we have to try to stress them high, force them as much as possible to long passes," Backe said. "Don't give them time and space. The work ethic was great today, the pressing game from the whole team, and that's the key to the defense."QUOTESSAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES HEAD COACH FRANK YALLOPOn the result:
I think it was an even game, I thought we played well tonight. We had our chances to score, but it felt like one of those games where youre going to get one. A couple fell to (Chris Wondolowski) Wondo in the second half where he is usually going to bury that, but he didnt. I think a draw would have been a fair result, I dont feel we deserved to lose.

On the second leg in New York:
New York are happy to come away with the win, but at least its only one goal down. We can head into New York and come away with a two-nil win and go through, so at least its not way out of reach, and we have that to hang on to. Right now, we are one-nil down at halftime.
SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES DEFENDER JASON HERNANDEZOn the result:
I thought first of all, that the crowd was fantastic tonight, they really got behind us. We came out on top of them, and theyre a good team. We had some good opportunities, they had some good opportunities, and what it comes down to with who moves on are plays in front of goal. They got one, and we were chasing and looking for a goal, but we couldnt find it. I think we can take a lot of positives out of the game. It came down to efficiency in the final third.

On the second leg:
We have played well on the road all season, so we will just go do it. Ive never come in during halftime of a game and started celebrating like the game is won, so its just a break right now, its halftime. We will come out in New York with the same mentality and hopefully the ball will bounce our way a bit and we will get the result over there.

SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES GOALKEEPER JON BUSCHOn the 1-0 result:
Theyre a dangerous team and have a lot of dangerous weapons. They had a lot of opportunities and we had a few where we could have tied it up, but unfortunately we didnt. We know what we have to do now and luckily, its only one.

Looking Ahead:
We said when we walked out, (Ramiro Corrales) Rams and I were talking, saying remember, its a two-game series. You dont want to kill yourself in game two. You need to give yourself an opportunity in game two. Would we like to go to New York with a lead? Absolutely, but it didnt happen. Theres a whole ninety minutes left to play. We have to go for it, its the playoffs and we have to go for it. We will never give up, battle to the end and see what happens in New York now.

Earthquakes announce roster moves ahead of 2017 season

AP

Earthquakes announce roster moves ahead of 2017 season

The San Jose Earthquakes announced today that the club has exercised 2017 contract options on six players: goalkeeper David Bingham, defenders Victor Bernardez, Kip Colvey and Andres Imperiale, and midfielders Fatai Alashe and Matheus Silva.

Stage One of the Re-Entry Draft will take place on Friday, Dec. 16 at 12 p.m. PT and Stage Two of the Re-Entry Draft will take place on Thursday, Dec. 22 at 12 p.m. PT. The two drafts will take place via teleconference with all 22 clubs represented. MLS will release the results following each of the calls. Both of the Re-Entry Drafts will be conducted in the same order as the traditional Waiver Draft.

Plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team crashes in Colombia; 75 dead

Plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team crashes in Colombia; 75 dead

LA UNION, Colombia -- A chartered plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team to the biggest match of its history crashed into a Colombian hillside and broke into pieces, killing 75 people and leaving six survivors, Colombian officials said Tuesday.

The British Aerospace 146 short-haul plane, operated by a charter airline with roots in Venezuela, declared an emergency and lost radar contact just before 10 p.m. Monday (0300 GMT Tuesday) because of an electrical failure, aviation authorities said.

The aircraft, which had departed from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, was carrying the up and coming Chapecoense soccer team from southern Brazil for Wednesday's first leg of a two-game Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico Nacional of Medellin - the continent's second-most-important championship.

"What was supposed to be a celebration has turned into a tragedy," Medellin Mayor Federico Gutierrez said from the search and rescue command center.

The club said in a brief statement on its Facebook page, "May God accompany our athletes, officials, journalists and other guests traveling with our delegation."

Expressions of grief poured in from all over the soccer world. South America's federation canceled all scheduled matches in a show of solidarity, Real Madrid's squad interrupted its training for a minute of silence and Argentina legend Diego Maradona sent his condolences to the victims' families over Facebook.

Rescuers working through the night were initially heartened after pulling three passengers alive from the wreckage. But as the hours passed, heavy rainfall and low visibility grounded helicopters and slowed efforts to reach the crash site.

At daybreak, dozens of bodies were quickly collected into white bags while rescuers scavenged through pieces of the plane's fuselage strewn across the muddy mountainside.

Images broadcast on local television showed three passengers arriving to a local hospital in ambulances on stretchers and covered in blankets connected to an IV. Among the survivors was Chapecoense defender Alan Ruschel, who doctors said suffered spinal injuries.

Two goalkeepers, Danilo and Jackson Follmann, as well as a journalist traveling with the team and a Bolivian flight attendant, were found alive in the wreckage. But Danilo was later reported as dead, and authorities said another defender, Helio Zampier, had survived amid a confusion of sometimes conflicting early reports.

The aircraft is owned by LaMia, a company with roots in Venezuela and that has a close relationship with several premier South American squads.

Argentina's state-run news agency said the plane involved in the crash had transported Barcelona striker Lionel Messi and the national team this month from Brazil to Colombia between World Cup qualifier matches. The airliner also reportedly transported Venezuela's national squad and several top teams from Bolivia in the past.

LaMia's website, which is no longer online, said it operated three 146 Avro short-haul jets made by British Aerospace and with a maximum range of around 2,965 kilometers (1,600 nautical miles) - about the same as the distance between Santa Cruz and Medellin, the route it was flying when it went down.

Alfredo Bocanegra, the head of Colombia's aviation authority, said initial reports suggest the aircraft was suffering electrical problems although investigators were also looking into an account from one of the survivors that the plane had run out of fuel about five minutes from its expected landing at Jose Maria Cordova airport outside Medellin.

Bolivia's civil aviation agency said the aircraft picked up the Brazilian team in Santa Cruz, where players had arrived earlier in the day on a commercial flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Spokesman Cesar Torrico said that the plane underwent an inspection before departing for Colombia and reported no problems.

British Aerospace, which is now known as BAE Systems, says that the first 146-model plane took off in 1981 and that just under 400 were built in total in the U.K. through 2003. It says around 220 of are still in service in a variety of roles, including aerial firefighting and overnight freight services.

A video published on the team's Facebook page showed the team readying for a flight earlier Monday in Sao Paulo's Guarulhos international airport. Photos of team members in the cockpit and posing in front of the plane ahead of departure quickly spread across social media.

The team, from the small city of Chapeco, was in the middle of a fairy tale season. It joined Brazil's first division in 2014 for the first time since the 1970s and made it last week to the Copa Sudamericana finals - the equivalent of the UEFA Europa League tournament - after defeating two of Argentina's fiercest squads, San Lorenzo and Independiente, as well as Colombia's Junior.

"This morning I said goodbye to them and they told me they were going after the dream, turning that dream into reality," Chapecoense board member told TV Globo. "The dream was over early this morning."

The team is so modest that tournament organizers ruled that its 22,000-seat arena was too small to host the final match, which was moved to a stadium 300 miles (480 kilometers) to the north in the city of Curitiba.

"This is unbelievable, I am walking on the grass of the stadium and I feel like I am floating," Andrei Copetti told the AP. "No one understands how a story that was so amazing could suffer such a devastating reversal. For many people here reality has still not struck."